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Bill Clements Dies at 94; Set Texas on G.O.P. Path

HOUSTON — Bill Clements, a brash oilman who founded an international drilling company before going into politics and breaking the Democrats’ stranglehold on the Texas governor’s office in 1978, died Sunday at a Dallas-area hospital. He was 94.

His family said he died a day after emergency surgery to repair a perforated intestine. His daughter, Nancy Clements Seay, said he had also been treated for prostate cancer and had been in declining health while mourning the killing of his 69-year-old son, whose body was found last October near the son’s East Texas ranch.

Mr. Clements, the first Republican governor of Texas since Reconstruction, became involved in politics in the late 1960s after rising from oilfield roughneck to become a wealthy partner in a large offshore drilling company, Sedco. He was a leader in the Republican insurgency that began to chip away at the power that conservative Democrats had wielded in Texas for more than 100 years.

After his death, Gov. Rick Perry called Mr. Clements “the father of the modern-day Texas Republican Party.”

His two separate terms in office — 1979-83 and 1987-91 — marked a sea change in Texas politics, preparing the way for Republicans to take the governor’s office in Austin with the elections of George W. Bush and later Mr. Perry.

“That’s a historic change, and I guess I’d like to say that I put a brick in place to bring that about,” Mr. Clements told The Houston Chronicle in 1990.

He sought elected office after serving as deputy secretary of defense under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, earning a reputation as a fierce manager who pushed the Pentagon to use new technology to modernize the armed forces and who rarely lost a battle over financing with Congress.

In 1978, he came back to Texas to run what was seen as a quixotic campaign for governor. But the Democrats were split after a nasty primary, and Mr. Clements narrowly defeated their candidate, John Hill. He spent more than $7 million of his own money and portrayed himself as a self-made millionaire who would bring a businessman’s no-nonsense style to the job. The upset victory opened the door for other Republicans to win statewide office and encouraged some conservative Democrats to switch parties.

In 1982, Mr. Clements lost to a Democrat, Mark White, and remarked, “Hell, I’ve drilled dry wells before.” Four years later, he returned for a rematch and, tapping anger over a faltering economy, won a second term with 52 percent of the vote.

In Austin, Mr. Clements cut a colorful figure, favoring plaid sport coats, driving a brown Mercury station wagon to work and often walking to a bar on Congress Avenue for a hamburger lunch.

“He thought of himself as an entrepreneur,” his daughter said. ”He never thought of himself as a politician.”

Known for his outspokenness, he had a tendency to say things that infuriated various constituents. He once said that scuba diving — which had been found to be dangerous for a fetus — might be a good form of birth control. In 1979, when a Mexican oil spill threatened the South Texas coast, he advised residents not to “cry over spilt milk.” (His company, it turned out, had leased equipment to the well operators.)

During his first term, he was frustrated in his goal of eliminating 25,000 state jobs, mostly because the Republicans had only 26 seats in the 181-member Legislature. Still, he won passage of a series of anticrime measures, including stiffer drug penalties, and vetoed 51 bills during the first session as he pared the budget.

During his second term, he steered the state through a crippling oil bust and fought unsuccessfully to enact deep cuts in services before giving in to legislative leaders and signing a record tax increase. Devoted to historic preservation, he was instrumental in the restoration of the Governor’s Mansion and the Capitol. But he was hampered by revelations in March 1987 that he and other members of the Board of Regents at Southern Methodist University in Dallas had approved paying football players from a slush fund created by a booster. He later apologized for his role in the scandal, which led to the cancellation of the football season, but it damaged his chance of re-election, and he bowed out of the race in 1990.

William Perry Clements Jr. was born on April 13 1917, and grew up in a wealthy Dallas suburb. But his father lost his job and most of his wealth in the Great Depression, forcing Mr. Clements to work in the oilfields to pay for college. He attended Southern Methodist University, where he studied engineering and played football, but he never completed a degree, returning instead to jobs on oil rigs and becoming fascinated with drilling technology.

After serving in the Army Corps of Engineers in World War II, he and two partners bought two old drilling rigs in a venture called Southeastern Drilling Company. Over the next two decades, Mr. Clements ran the company as it grew to become Sedco, one of the world’s largest offshore drilling concerns and a technical leader in underwater drilling. Schlumberger bought out the company in 1984.

In his later years, he and his second wife, Rita Crocker, divided their time between an estate in Forney, Tex., just east of Dallas, and a ranch in Taos, N.M. He became a philanthropic force in Dallas, establishing a Center for Southwest Studies at S.M.U. and donating $100 million to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

In addition to Ms. Seay, his daughter from a previous marriage, he is survived by his wife.

In October, his son, B. Gill Clements, was found shot to death and buried in a shallow grave behind a home adjacent to his ranch south of Dallas. He had apparently been shot by a neighbor who was known for using an assault weapon to guard his property. The neighbor was killed in a shootout with the authorities.

Ms. Seay said her father had been shattered by the killing. “It was a time of great grief for him,” she said. “They were very close.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 31, 2011, on page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Bill Clements Dies at 94; Set Texas on G.O.P. Path. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe